What! and not one to heave the pious sigh! <br />Not one whose sorrow-swoln and aching eye <br />For social scenes, for life's endearments fled, <br />Shall drop a tear and dwell upon the dead! <br />Poor wretched Outcast! I will weep for thee, <br />And sorrow for forlorn humanity. <br />Yes I will weep, but not that thou art come <br />To the stern Sabbath of the silent tomb: <br />For squalid Want, and the black scorpion Care, <br />Heart-withering fiends! shall never enter there. <br />I sorrow for the ills thy life has known <br />As thro' the world's long pilgrimage, alone, <br />Haunted by Poverty and woe-begone, <br />Unloved, unfriended, thou didst journey on: <br />Thy youth in ignorance and labour past, <br />And thine old age all barrenness and blast! <br />Hard was thy Fate, which, while it doom'd to woe, <br />Denied thee wisdom to support the blow; <br />And robb'd of all its energy thy mind, <br />Ere yet it cast thee on thy fellow-kind, <br />Abject of thought, the victim of distress, <br />To wander in the world's wide wilderness. <br /> <br />Poor Outcast sleep in peace! the wintry storm <br />Blows bleak no more on thine unshelter'd form; <br />Thy woes are past; thou restest in the tomb;-- <br />I pause--and ponder on the days to come.<br /><br />Robert Southey<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-pauper-s-funeral/
